


The Living Poetry of William J. Poindexter and Derek Malik Nurse

by benjji2795



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: I hope y'all don't mind, M/M, Or at least as close as I get to poetry, Poetry, and incredibly gay, and v soft, this is really sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 19:48:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8858473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benjji2795/pseuds/benjji2795
Summary: William J. Poindexter is a living, breathing poem, and he’s being asked to be a part of it...so he kisses back, and allows himself to get lost in the poetry of their lips and hearts joining together.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Last night, while I was lying in bed, I was thinking about Nursey and Dex and poetry and like...I actually started writing some decent poetry in my head and I was like...I gotta turn this into a fic. So I wrote this in like two hours just now (instead of studying for exams), and it's a soft, gay mess (just like me). Hope y'all like it :)

“I mean, why would someone like you want me?”

 

Derek doesn’t remember how they got here. How they went from lounging on the couch during Haus movie night to standing in the bathroom. He doesn’t remember how they got here, doesn’t know what prompted Dex to say what he just did, but his jaw nearly drops when he hears it.

 

“Someone like me?” he inquires dumbly, because he understands what that means when someone says it the way Dex just did; like he’s something unattainable, out of his league, which is probably just about the most ridiculous thing Derek has heard in his life.

 

“Yeah, someone like you,” Dex repeats, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “You’re all easy smiles and flawless skin and beautiful green eyes and I’m—God, I’m just some awkward ginger boy with stupidly big ears and too many freckles and weird amber eyes and—”

 

Derek frowns because, nope, _that’s_ the most ridiculous thing he’s heard in his life. None of those things are anything he associates with Dex.

 

“Will,” he mumbles because Dex is still going on about something. Dex stops, and Derek steps closer, moving into Dex’s space. “Will, when I look at you, I don’t see any of those things. I don’t see an awkward ginger or stupidly big ears or too many freckles or weird amber eyes. I see someone who is far more beautiful and—well, _poetic_ than they seem to realize.”

 

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” Dex asks.

 

Derek shakes his head. He’s been writing poetry about Dex since the day they first met on the taddy tour. Well, he’s tried to write poetry. He’s lost count of the number of times he’s sat down with an open composition book and a pen and tried to put down all the thoughts he has swirling around in his head about Dex. The pen hovers over the page, sentences are formed and then quickly discarded. He’s tried to write poetry about Dex, but nothing he comes up with has ever felt worthy enough of Dex to actually put on paper.

 

Maybe it’s because he never feels like he can distill the essence of Dex down, he can’t focus all the thoughts he has into one, clear theme. But just maybe—hair, freckles, ears, eyes. That might be just enough to get him started.

 

“When I look at you, I don’t see red hair,” Derek whispers the beginning of his poem, so quietly that if they weren’t so close, Dex wouldn’t be able to hear him. “Instead, I see hair the color of fire, matching the blaze roaring inside you. It allows the world to see the way you crackle and burn up inside, sometimes being consumed by anger, or by desire. It shows the flame of passion and intensity, a flame that burns brighter than any I’ve ever seen.”

 

Derek pauses, reaching out and brushing Dex’s bangs off his forehead. Dex doesn’t shy away from the contact, and there’s nothing in his expression that suggests to Derek that he should stop. So he continues on.

 

“When I look at you,” he says, hand falling to Dex’s cheek, absently tracing shapes with Dex’s freckles. “I don’t see someone with too many freckles. I don’t think that’s possible. Instead, I see freckles, as numerous as the stars, adorning your skin, their twinkling dots forming constellations and patterns so intricate that the stars could only hopelessly dream to match them.”

 

Dex is still quiet, the only sound coming from him being his slow but ragged breathing. His face betrays nothing, so it’s only that and the way Dex is trembling slightly under his touch that Derek has any idea that what he’s saying is affecting Dex.

 

“Your ears—well, maybe I can’t describe them poetically the way I can everything else,” Derek says, sighing slightly, because that kind of broke the rhythm of the poem, but this is like, a rough draft. It’s not going to be perfect. So he takes a deep breath, and pushes through. “But when I look at them, I don’t see stupidly big ears. I see big ears that show your capacity to listen, to lend an ear to your friends and listen to their problems. I look at your ears and I see sympathy and empathy.”

 

Which that leaves Dex’s eyes. In his head, he’s written many lines of poetry about all of Dex’s features—except his eyes. Every time he gets to his eyes, his heart stops and his mind goes blank. Every part of Dex is indescribable, but his eyes even more so. But there’s something about the way this poem is coming out of him that makes him feel like maybe, just maybe, he might come up with something this time.

 

“Your eyes,” Derek says, closing his own and sucking in a deep breath. “Your eyes—they’re—well, they’re the part of you that enchants and haunts me the most. You look at your eyes and you see weird and amber. I look at them and I’m—I’m reminded of a sunset over the water. When the sun just touches the horizon and the sky becomes a mixture of reds, oranges, and yellows, as if the sun’s radiance is burning up the very atmosphere. I think of the sunset, and I see the hues of red and orange and yellow refracting off the water’s waves, creating an endless sea of color.”

 

“I see an ocean in your eyes when I look at you Will. They’re full of the depths of your emotions, and I find myself transfixed when you narrow them in concentration, maybe on a program that isn’t working, or when you’re trying to learn Ransom and Holster’s newest play. I’m bewitched when they crinkle up at the corners as you laugh, often at me for tripping over my feet again, or for knocking over my full glass for the fifth time this week. But most of all, I’m captivated when I see the way your eyes communicate love. It’s something I could never hope to put into words. But I see the way you look at your dads, and at your brothers and sisters, and at Chowder and the other Samwell guys, and I see so much love that it nearly bowls me over.”

 

Derek bites his lip. The next thing he wants to say might be too much. But he’s already gone so far with this. Dex isn’t dumb—he knows where all this is coming from. So he might as well just go for broke. And so he lets this poem about William J. Poindexter, become a poem about William J. Poindexter _and_ Derek Malik Nurse.

 

“I see the way you look at someone you love and I—my heart wishes that you could look at me that way,” he says, and Dex’s face, which has been to this point blank and unreadable, finally shows some emotion. His eyes widen slightly, and jaw drops a bit. “Sometimes, I think I do. Like the time when we tried to stay up and binge all of Brooklyn 99. I was still awake at 3 AM, but you were fast asleep, your face pressed into my shoulder. I wanted to put an arm around you and pull the covers over us and fall asleep together, but I was scared to see the anger in your eyes the next morning. So I shook you awake, and for a moment, when you looked up at me, I saw it. I saw that love, and I wanted to ask you to stay, but I didn’t. I sent you back to your room, and I thought about that look. I knew it was just because you were still half-asleep. But god, how I wished that it was because that was what you truly felt.”

 

“Nursey—” Dex says, but Derek can’t stop the words from pouring out his mouth, from laying his heart out bare for Dex to see.

 

“I watch you give so much love to everyone every day. I watch you give love to everyone but me, and maybe it doesn’t hurt like it used to, but it still stings. But I can watch without being blinded by that gaze being turned on me, and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe, one day, I’ll think back on the way you look at the people you love, and I’ll see the same look in someone else’s eyes being directed at me, and then I’ll know what it feels like to be loved that much.”

 

“Nursey, you a—” Dex tries again, but Derek still can’t stop.

 

“And for now, I’m surviving. I’m soaking up the stray rays of every look you give, even though it’s not for me. I’m trying to memorize the feeling, because I know that I don’t have much time left to share with you. We’re graduating in a year. In a year, we’re going to say goodbye to each other, go our separate ways, and maybe I’ll never forget you, but before you even realize it, I’ll just be some faint memory in the back of your mind. I’ll be a person you once knew like the back of my hand, but the years have erased the familiar veins, marks and scars, leaving only a faint imprint in their place.”

 

“Don’t say that Derek!” Dex says, his jaw clenching the way it always does when Dex is feeling particularly determined or defiant.

 

“It’s the truth though,” Derek replies, chuckling sadly. “We think we won’t forget something important that happened to us, or an important person from a certain part of our lives, but we do. Life goes on, and we start making new memories, and then we make more until suddenly, there isn’t room for the old memories any more. Only the people that affected you deeply, that reached in and made their mark on your heart remain. Everyone else, we forget, even though we vowed never to. And it happens because time is exacting, unforgiving, and we are forced to carry on, whether we want to or not.”

 

_“Only the people that reached in and made their mark on your heart remain,”_ Dex repeats, placing his hand over Derek’s heart. “Maybe you don’t realize but—you’ve made your mark on mine.”

 

Derek nearly scoffs at this. He doesn’t exactly, but he does let out a derisive puff of air. Because it all goes back to the eyes, to the looks that Dex gives him. Derek has never seen Dex give him a look that makes it seem like he’s even come close to scratching the surface of Dex’s heart, let alone making his own mark on it.

 

“You don’t believe me,” Dex sighs.

 

“How can I?” Derek asks. “There’s barely any emotion in your eyes when you look at me. There’s no affection, no fondness, no love of any kind. How could I possibly have made any kind of mark on you if after three years, that’s still how you look at me?”

 

“You’ve never seen the way I really, _truly_ look at you,” Dex says, and their faces are so close that Derek can feel his breath ghosting over his lips.

 

“Yes I—”

 

“No you haven’t,” Dex says, shaking his head. “You couldn’t have, because I’ve always made sure you weren’t looking.”

 

Derek’s heart starts to beat faster, something rising in his chest that feels dangerously like hope. “How—how do you look at me then?” he questions.

 

“I look at you with—fuck, I’m so in love with you. And when you’re not looking at me I look at you and—it’s written all over my face,” Dex answers, his hands coming to rest at the place where they meet his neck. “Chowder chirps me for it all the time.”

 

“Why didn’t—how come I never got to see it?” Derek asks.

 

“It’s like I said—why would someone like you want someone like me?” Dex replies with a shrug. “I was protecting myself. We were friends and I was—well I was the one being selfish. I wanted to keep you, however I could have you, and I thought that that meant I had to hide it all. When you looked at me, I had to make sure you couldn’t see anything, or else you—the guy who I thought would never want me—would be able to see just how much I was in love with you.”

 

“But you’re telling me now.”

 

“Yeah,” Dex mumbles. “I wasn’t planning to be but no one has ever—I’ve never heard someone describe me in a ways that made me want to love the way I look. And so I guess—what’s the point in hiding love from someone who clearly feels the same way, right?” Dex pauses, bites his lip, looks down for a second, and then brings his eyes back up to meet Derek’s. “You do feel the same way, right?”

 

Derek is so lost in Dex’s eyes that he almost doesn’t hear the question. That look is there in Dex’s eyes, unguarded, and so much brighter and intense that Derek has ever seen, a look that he feels only he could bring out of Dex. It’s love and admiration and need and everything Derek has ever wanted to see in Dex’s eyes.

 

“Derek?”

 

“Oh God yes,” Derek gasps. “I love you so much that sometimes my chest hurts and I can’t breathe but you never looked at me the way you did everyone else and I just never thought you would.”

 

“I’ve never looked at you the way I look at everyone else because I don’t feel the same way about them that I feel about you,” Dex says, and that’s it. Derek has to kiss him.

 

He presses their lips together, and for a brief moment, Derek thinks that Dex’s lips are worthy of an addition to his poem about him. Hell, he thinks he could write an entire anthology about the way Dex is kissing him right now.

 

But what does he care about writing poetry right now? William J. Poindexter is a living, breathing poem, and he’s being asked to be a part of it, something he wants to do with all his heart and soul. So he kisses back, and allows himself to get lost in the poetry of their lips and hearts joining together.


End file.
